We’re going on to the rocks. Take in the sail.’

‘I can’t,’ said ’Ntoni, his voice stiffled by storm and effort, ‘the sheet is wet. The knife, Alessi, quick!’

‘Cut then, and fast!’

At that moment there was a sudden splintering sound: the Provvidenza, which had been bowed to one side, shot up like a spring, and almost threw the lot of them into the sea; yard and sail fell on to the boat, broken as a bit of straw. Then a voice was heard moaning, like someone at death’s door.

‘Who is it? Who’s shouting?’ asked ’Ntoni, using teeth and knife to cut the cord at the edges of the sail, which had fallen on to the boat along with the mast and was covering everything. Suddenly a gust of wind took it right away and carried it off, hissing. Then the two brothers were able completely to free the stump of the yard and throw it into the sea. The boat righted itself, but not so padron ’Ntoni, nor did he answer ’Ntoni when he called him. Now, when sea and wind shriek together, there is nothing more frightening than not receiving an answer to your own call.

‘Grandfather,’ Alessi shouted too, and as they heard nothing, the hair stood up on the two brothers’ heads. The night was so black that you couldn’t see from one end of the Provvidenza to the other, so that Alessi actually stopped crying from sheer shock. Their grandfather was stretched out on the bottom of the boat, his head broken. ’Ntoni finally felt his way towards him and thought he was dead, because he wasn’t breathing or moving at all. The tiller kept banging hither and thither, while the boat first leapt into the air, then plummetted into the abyss.

‘Blessed St Francis of Paola, help us,’ the two boys shrieked, now that they didn’t know what else to do.

St Francis in his mercy heard them, as he was going through the storm to the help of his devotees, and he laid his cloak beneath the Provvidenza, just as she was about to break open like a nutshell on the scoglio dei colombi, below the customs’ look-out point.

The boat bounded over the rock like a colt, and then ran aground sharply, nose downwards. ‘Courage,’ the guards shouted to them from the shore, and ran this way and that with their lanterns, throwing out ropes. ‘We’re here! Keep going!’ At last one of the ropes fell athwart the Provvidenza, which was trembling like a leaf, and right across ’Ntoni’s face worse than a whiplash, but at that moment it felt better than a caress.

‘Throw it here,’ he shouted, grasping the rope as it ran rapidly through his hands, ready to slip away altogether. Alessi too clung on with all his strength, and somehow they managed to wrap it round the tiller once or twice, and the customs guards pulled them to shore.

But padron ’Ntoni still gave no sign of life, and when they put the lantern up to his face they saw that it was streaked with blood, so that they all thought he was dead, and his grandsons began to tear their hair. But after a couple of hours don Michele, Rocco Spatu, Vanni Pizzuto and all the loafers who had been in the wine shop when they heard the news came running, and they got him to open his eyes by dint of cold water and a lot of rubbing. When he realised where he was, the poor old man asked them to carry him home on a ladder, because it was less than an hour to Trezza.

Shrieking on the square and beating their breasts Maruzza, Mena and the neighbours saw him arriving like that, stretched out on the ladder and as white as a corpse.

‘It’s nothing,’ don Michele assured them, leading the crowd, ‘a mere nothing,’ and he rushed to the chemist for medicinal vinegar. Don Franco came in person holding the little bottle in his hands, and Piedipapera, comare Grazia, and the Zuppiddos, padron Cipolla and the whole neighbourhood came rushing up too, into the strada del Nero, because on such occasions all quarrels are forgotten, and even la Locca came along, because she always went wherever there was a crowd, whenever she heard bustle in the village, day or night, almost as though she no longer ever slept and was permanently waiting for her Menico. So people crowded into the little street outside the Malavoglia’s house, as though there were a dead man there, and cousin Anna had to shut the door in people’s faces.

‘Let me in,’ shouted Nunziata, banging on the door, having come running up half-dressed. ‘Let me see what is going on at comare Maruzza’s.’

‘What was the point of sending us for the ladder, if you don’t let us into the house to see what’s up?’ yelled la Locca’s son.

Zuppidda and the Mangiacarrubbe girl had forgotten all the insults they had exchanged, and were chatting outside the door, with their hands under their aprons. ‘That’s what it’s like in that business, you end up paying with your life,’ said Zuppidda, ‘and if you marry your daughter with seagoing folk one day or the next you’ll have her coming home a widow, and with orphans into the bargain, and if it hadn’t been for don Michele there wouldn’t be a single male Malavogia left to-night.’ The best thing seemed to be one of those who did nothing and earned their daily bread all the same, like don Michele, for instance, who was bigger and fatter than a cleric, and always wore fine cloth, and got fat on half the village, and everyone pandered to him; even the chemist, who wanted to get rid of the king, bowed and scraped to him, with his nasty great black hat.

‘It’s nothing,’ don Franco came out and said; ‘we’ve bound him up; but now he has to run a fever, or he’s a dead man.’

Piedipapera wanted to go and see too, because he was almost like one of the family, and padron Fortunato, and anyone else who could elbow their way in.

‘I don’t like the look of him,’ pronounced padron Cipolla, shaking his head. ‘How do you feel, compare ’Ntoni?’

‘This is why padron Fortunato didn’t want to give his son to St Agatha,’ Zuppidda commented meanwhile, left in the doorway as she was. ‘That wretched man has a sixth sense.’

And la Vespa added: ‘Property at sea is writ on water.’ Landed property is what you need.’

‘What a night for the Malavoglia,’ exclaimed comare Piedipapera. ‘All the disasters for this house happen at night,’ observed padron Cipolla, as he left the house with don Franco and compare Tino.

‘All because they were trying to earn an honest crust, poor things,’ added Grazia.

For two or three days padron ’Ntoni was more dead than alive. The fever had come, as the chemist had said, but it had come on so strongly that it almost carried the sick man off. The poor fellow no longer complained, lying in his corner, and when Mena or la Longa took him something to drink he clutched the jug with trembling hands, as though they were trying to snatch it from him.

Don Ciccio came in the mornings, tended the wounds, felt his pulse, had him put out his tongue and then went off shaking his head.

One night they even left the candle alight, when don Ciccio had shaken his head particularly firmly; la Longa had put the image of the Virgin beside him, and they were telling their beads by the sick man’s bed, and he wasn’t even breathing and didn’t even want any water, and no one went to sleep, so that Lia was practically dislocating herself yawning, she was so sleepy. The house had an ominous silence about it, so that the carts passing on the road made the glasses dance on the table, and caused the people watching over the sick man to start; and the whole of the next day went by like this, too, and the neighbours stood on the doorstep, chatting among themselves in low voices, keeping an eye on everything through the doorway. Towards evening padron ’Ntoni asked to see his family one by one, and his eyes were dull, and he asked what the doctor had said. ’Ntoni was at the bedside, crying like a child, for he was a good lad at heart.

‘Don’t cry like that,’ said his grandfather. ‘Don’t cry.